I can identify with what happened to the driver of this Toyota. I was fortunate that when my car attempted to take over and zoom forward I was stopped and had both feet on the break. I was able to turn off the car’s ignition and place the transmission in neutral.

What happened to this woman was much worse — the breaks were ineffective and the transmission was over ridden by what sounds like a software glitch. She is lucky to be alive.

Since something similar happened to me in a rental Toyota — I understand exactly what she was describing in her testimony.

Update:

Incredibly, the dealer told Smith and her husband, in writing, that “when properly maintained, the brakes will always override the accelerator.” Ultimately, an arbiter with the National Center for Dispute Settlement denied the Smith’s claim, and an investigator with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told them it was “probably” floor mats, which were the subject of a major safety advisory by Toyota in September 2009.

Can the NHTSA and the Toyota dealer be put in jail for manslaughter — because they dismissed this issue with Toyota cars???

Ironically since 2006 I have assumed that I was dealing with single case of a bad car. Now it turns out that the issue I reported to the Hertz employee had happened to others with terrible consequences.

Toyota claim that they haven’t even investigated the electronic system — or the computer program — which is called by Electrical Engineers — Real Time repeating programs.